Phil Collins "They Shoot Horses" 2004 
Painter Tomma Abts
sculptor Rebecca Warren
Mark Titchner the "all rounder"
What a bunch of cold, boring work. Where's the passion? Perhaps a bit in Warren's sculpture, but really....
Posted on 10/02/2006 7:44:28 AM PDT by Republicanprofessor
It makes me sad to remember how thrilled I was on 15 April 2005, the day I received a letter from Stephen Deuchar, director of Tate Britain, asking me to serve as a juror for the 2006 Turner Prize. I had to read it a dozen times before I could believe it and then I was so pathetically proud I told everyone I knew, even the windowcleaner. Most of my friends laughed their heads off but none of them actually said: 'Don't do it.'
......
On the other hand, I did once see Keanu Reeves in Vyner Street admiring an artwork in the Modern Art gallery, a blue, plastic rectangle, I seem to recall, that looked like a Formica offcut and cost 20 grand. Reeves described it as 'almost Kleinian', which is artspeak for blue.
......
Art dinners are odd affairs, usually held in private rooms of fashionable restaurants, for 30 or 40 people. It is never clear who is paying (though somebody is) or why you are there. Nobody is ever properly introduced, so you spend half the evening trying to work out who everyone is. I probably insulted people left and right by asking if they ran a gallery when they were, say, head of Italy's national museums, but how are you supposed to know that stuff when nobody tells you.
........
I hate to say it, but my year as a Turner juror has seriously dampened, though I hope not extinguished, my enthusiasm for contemporary art. There is so much bad work around, so much that is derivative, half-baked or banal, you can't believe that galleries would show it.
(Excerpt) Read more at arts.guardian.co.uk ...
"If you are important, or if you just think you're important, you ring the gallery beforehand to fix an appointment. If you wander in off the street, you are generally assumed to be a nutter and maybe you are. But then if you make an appointment, you have to be 'talked through' the exhibition by one of the galleristas, which is usually a pain, especially if you are looking at three slabs of concrete and a tyre."
"For the first few months, I conscientiously tried to visit every London gallery listed in the New Exhibitions newsletter, but I soon learned that there are an awful lot of galleries that subsist by selling anaemic abstracts intended to go nicely with the curtains."
The contemporary art scene is starting to sound a lot like a gigantic Ponzi scheme.
Phil Collins "They Shoot Horses" 2004 Painter Tomma Abts
sculptor Rebecca Warren
Mark Titchner the "all rounder"
What a bunch of cold, boring work. Where's the passion? Perhaps a bit in Warren's sculpture, but really....
After seeing the crap hanging on the walls at my company I believe I could pull stuff out of a dumpster, wrap an expensive frame around it and sell it for thousands.
Art ping.
Let Woofie, Sam Cree, or me know if you want on or off this art ping list.
"I've long suspected that many of the transactions (involving large sums of money for what is literally junk)are simply covers for drug deals."
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Interesting, you mean money laundering, in other words?
I looked at an Abts gallery show online. Itty bitty paintings that I could have reasonably duplicated or exceeded with my drafting tools.
She claims that her works doesn't represent anything - it's purely meaningless; just "shapes".
What is the point of meaningless art, again? I mean, if the purpose isn't to match the couch, what purpose does it have then?
You could, but you'd have to make it look like unique dumpster stuff, and you'd have to learn to talk a good line about what it all means.
Some lady actually brought in a swatch from her couch to one of my Dad's art shows. So for his next show, I brought in a toilette seat cover...
Anyone who's ever been thrilled on April 15th of any year is delusional....
To comment about the nature of reality; to show us a window into the artist's mind; to make us confront ourselves and the reactions we have when we see these objects; to simply be, as a statement about existence. . .
But mostly, to exploit a meretricious and incestuous system of criticism and patronage that profits from the trade in this garbage, at the expense of real advances in art--in other words, to make money.
That Abts thing is pretty cool actually. I would pay £200 for it - but no more.
"Blasting off with Dale Arden and Dr. Zarkov, Flash and his intrepid band of adventurers quickly learn that Queen Azura, ruler of Mars, is stealing Earth's nitrogen to aid in her ongoing war with the Clay People, Martians whom Azura magically turned into living mud".
Cost me only 15 cents every Saturday matinee in 19__ to view Clay People (plus a five cent box of Milk Duds).
Leni
Here are a couple more by Ms. Abts. Pleasantly innocuous, but I have seen more exciting covers on corporate annual reports, produced in-house! She's the favorite, evidently.
Great article.The whole deal with the "YBA's" and Charles Saatchi's unseemly profiteering by marketing his gallery's "discoveries" makes my skin crawl. Wonder if the London art scene will ever recover from all that rot.
The only way I would pay that much is if it were a quilt.
Not until you're part of the right crowd, you can't. Once you've made the right friends, been to the right parties, and sucked up to the right critics, then your dumpster crap will be 'recognized' as art by the arbiters of taste - until then, however, your trash from the alley is nothing more than trash from the alley.
She's British, not American, so I think their tax date is different. :)
I'm a global citizen on April 15th...I've pain aplenty on that day to share with the entire world..;-)
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